practical morality 1: gaps between theory and life

Of course when discussing these types of ideas we have to either go at it from a purely theoretical abstract perspective or consider it in terms of the actual world we live in today. If we consider the real world, the first problem is that we've got lots of moral standards but nobody follows them. So just deciding on a moral standard is clearly not really enough. Even if just a few don't buy into the agreed moral standard, they will wreak havoc in a society.

In other words, we've already got people behaving badly 24-7. So we can't just talk about morality in terms of a blank slate, but must address the issues in terms of what is moral when people are already being uncivil and really making life miserable in multiple ways.

Societies have, from the beginning, set down ground rules for behavior - and there are people who have, from the beginning, ignored the rules and made things disagreeable for everyone. Religions have tried to address the problem by setting out divinely revealed laws of God. It's been marginally better at curtailing the bad behavior, but not by much.

There are just too many variables that knock us all off our best intentions, or that encourage our worst motivations. There's biology with raging hormones, malfunctioning or missing or duplicate chromosomes, and post traumatic stress from all the distress we inflict on each other or suffer from the natural environment. There are also the psychological shocks, emotional strains and anxieties, and just plain insufficient internal resources to cope as well as all sorts of stuff that just drives us over the edge. And that's not even to mention raging egos, uncontrolled narcissism, oblivious self-centeredness, and deluded irrationality which more often than not characterize us humans.

And bad behavior breeds further bad behavior. I'm fine with you until you do something (unintentionally or intentionally) that frightens, hurts, or disgusts me, and then I get angry with you and then you get offended at me and then we start yelling..... you know the routine.

There is something to be said for the social and religious ethical codes, however, at this point. They really do cut down on the escalating bad behavior. We will more often refrain from doing and saying bad stuff if we feel socially constrained to not embarrass ourselves by crossing established social boundaries.

I don't care if someone is acting decently or morally or ethically only because they're afraid of public censure. Yes, it is doing them no good as far as actually helping them reach more mature levels of their humanity. But in terms of improving the living environment for the rest of us, it works just fine.

But we are attempting to pursue, at least conceptually, the question of the practical possibility of a universal morality. So is there a realistic possibility, in our human world as we know it (and not just in theory) for an ethic based on empathy, supported by our capacity to engage mirror neurons to experience vicariously the circumstances of another, and predicated on a fluid and open incorporation of all humanity into our own personal sphere of interest (as outlined in the previous set of posts on the evolution of morality and spirit).

Next week we’ll look at morals and ethics in the real world